WORDS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1581, 26 October 1912, Page 9

WORDS.

"Sleep-Sniggle," a new double section of the Oxford English Dictionary (Erowde) by W. A. Craigie, owes little to the grandeur of Greece or the splendour of Komo. A large proportion of the words are of native origin, a considerable number are derived from the closely related Flemish, Dutch, and Low'.Gernian languages, and several words of small reputation but of wide currency have corao in recently from vulgar and obscure sources. The first recorded use of "slob" is in Young's "Tour," 17S0, where it means Irish mild on the seashore; in 1815 the term is applied to a soft worm used in angling; the third sense, "a dull, slow, or untidy person," appears first in'lS6l; the Dictionary takes no account of its use in this country as an almost exact equivalent for the slang "muckcr'Va person not merely dull and untidy, but rough and vicious. In 1812 "slum" went on record as a cant word for room, and in 1824 we read of "regaling ... in the back parlour (vulgo slum) o£ an extremely low-bred Irish widow"; but the great wave of social reform rising in tbo final quarter of the nineteenth century . catches up this bit of sporting slang and brings it into prominence as the designation of the places where the "other half" live. By 1870 Lowell can speak of the "slums and stews of the debauched brain"; between 1863 and 1890 the word enters freely into compounds, e.g., "slum-literature,"' slumburrows," "slum-sister." The following quotation from the "Graphic," 1893, curiously illustrates the effect of the literary exploitation of the slums: "The appearance of respectability . . . deprives him of the glamour of slumland." Another word of obscure lineage, probably imitative in its origin, is ''slump"; as a verb meaning to fall or sink into a bog or swamp it is found in the late seventeenth centurv; but as a substantive it is ordered first in Hie sense known en the Stock Exchange, Boston "Journal," 1888: "There was another slump in oil on the Consolidated Exchange' to-day"; the recent popularity of /the word seems to reflect a general interest in high finance— "Westminster Budget," 1896: "There is clearly no 'slump' in the matrimonial market." "Smart-' as an adjective was thriven in English since the time of Wulfstan, 1023, but it is not represented in tho cognate languages. Its sense-development is. interesting, particularly in. the later stages, when it is recognised as an Americanism: first we. find a. "smart" whip or .a blow—one that causes pain; then a "smart" sorrow or wound; then "smart" words or style or, as in Fuller, "a smart jest, which would make the place both blush and bleed where it lighted"; then a "smart" rain; a "smart" (steep) hill; then in English dialect "'a smart few' means a considerable number"; Mrs. H. B. Stowe's "Dred," 1856, yields "I sold right smart of eggs des yere summer"; "smart" in the sense of clever or capable is found early in tho seventeenth century, and in the eighteenth had tho sanction of the "Tatler"; in the nineteenth century it passes for an Americanism, perhaps, because the quality denoted by it i-l fixed upon as the salient feature of the American character—"Tho Opossum is held in great respect by tho Yankees, as a particularly 'smart* animal." In 1888 Mr. Bryco writes: "In America every smart man is expected to be able to do anything he turns hjs hand to." Nowadays we suspect that "smart" is rather less in demand as a term of approbation for.our first citizens. American humour, recognising that there can easily bo too much of a sood thine, coined tho word "smarty," employed by Mnrk.Twaiirin 18S0, to suggest what happens when the national virtue is run into tho ground—New York "Post."